Part 15 (2/2)
He was killed while playing _chaugan_ (the modern polo) in A.D. 1210.
At that time he was supposed to be the richest man in the world; but, unlike Mahmud, he was generous. ”As liberal as Eibuk” is still a phrase in the mouth of India.
His son Aram (Leisure) appears to have deserved his name. He never gripped the kingdom, and lost it fatuously after less than a year.
Apparently he was not deemed worth the killing, and Altamish, a favourite slave of the slave Eibuk, took his place by virtue of being son-in-law to the dead king.
Altamish was also of Turki extraction. As a youth, the fame of his beauty and talents was noised abroad, and Shahab-ud-din was in the bidding for him, but hung back at the price; whereupon Eibuk the Lavish put down the fifty thousand pieces of silver, and carried off the prize.
Years after, he was married to the Princess-Royal, and so, adding Shums-ud-din (Sword of the Faith) to his name, ascended the throne, and reigned for no less than twenty-six years.
So Delhi, indeed, was founded by slaves!
Atlamish appears to have been of the regulation type. He was, so to speak, Kutb-ud-din and water. The largest number of Hindus he is recorded to have killed at one time is three hundred; a sad falling-off in _Ghazi_-dom.[3] On the other hand, he was the barbarian who, taking Ujjain, destroyed the magnificent temple of Maha-Kali which it had taken three hundred years to build. The idols thereof, and also a ”statue of Vikramaditya, who had been formerly prince of this country, and so renowned that the Hindus have taken an era from his death,” were conveyed solemnly to Delhi, and there broken at the door of the great mosque of which the magnificent ruins--spoils of many a Jain and Hindu temple--still lie about the foot of the Kutb Minar, a monument to the slave Eibuk who commenced it, the slave Altamish who finished it.
[Footnote 3: A Ghazi is the t.i.tle of honour given to one who has killed the infidel.]
This solemn smas.h.i.+ng was doubtless a fine ceremony, yet as we of the present day contemplate it, regret goes forth, especially for the statue of Vikramadjit. How many a riddle might it not have solved concerning the Unknown King!
We are told that Altamish was an ”enterprising, able, and good prince”; he has, however, another, and in the history of the world, quite unique claim to regard. The father of seven children, six of them in turn mounted the throne with more or less success.
Considerably less as regards the first occupant, Ruku-ud-din (Prop of the Faith), who spent his six months and twenty-eight days tenancy in lavis.h.i.+ng his inherited treasures on dancing girls, pimps and prost.i.tutes.
This might have been borne for longer, but the hideous cruelties of his mother, a Turki slave to whom he entrusted the reins of government, were such as to rouse even the dull humanity of a thirteenth-century Mahomedan. She had murdered horribly every one of the dead king's women, and had begun on his son's, when the patience of the various viceroys gave way. They entered into a conspiracy, deposed the king, and threw his mother into prison--a lenient punishment for such a monster of cruelty.
And then? Then they did a thing unheard of in Indian history--they raised a woman to the throne.
But Sultana Razia Begum was no ordinary mortal! Indeed, there is something so quaint about the recapitulation of her virtues, as given in the pages of Ferishta, that, perforce, one cannot but quote it.
”Razia Begum (my Lady Content) was possessed of every good quality which usually adorns the ablest princes; and those who scrutinise her actions most severely, will find in her no fault but that she was a woman.”
Alas! Poor Lady Content! Of what avail that you changed (as it is solemnly set down) your apparel; that you abandoned the petticoat in favour of the trews; that your father, when he appointed you regent during one of his long absences, defended his action by saying that though a woman, you had a man's head and heart, and were worth more than twenty such sons as he had? All this was of no avail against womanhood. Let this be thy comfort, poor shade of a dead queen, that the argument still holds good against thy sisters in this year of grace 1907!
Setting this aside, the career of Queen-Content matches in tragedy that of Mary Queen of Scots. A clever girl, evidently, her father made her his companion, and while her brothers were dicing and wenching, drinking and tw.a.n.ging the _sutara_, she was frowning with him over endless pacifications, endless violences, becoming, apparently, an adept at both. For it would have needed great qualifications to ensure the almost unanimous vote of the n.o.bles which placed a woman on the throne.
At first even these contemptuous Mahomedans were satisfied. Then came discontent. Did Razia Begum really favour the Abyssinian slave whom she allowed--_horribile dictum!_--to ”lift her on her horse by raising her up under the arms”? Or had she really forgotten the petticoat in the trews? Who can say? All we know is that Malik-Altunia, the Turki governor of Bhattinda--curious how that name crops up in all the really exciting tales of Indian history!--revolted on the plea of the queen's partiality to the Abyssinian; that she marched against the rebel, leading her troops; that a tumultuous conflict occurred in the old place of battles, in which the Abyssinian favourite was killed, the queen taken prisoner, and sent to Altunia's care in the fort.
So far good. But here affairs take a turn which is fairly breathless, and which gives pause for doubting Altunia's disinterested care for morality and _les convenances_.
He promptly married the empress, and with scarce a comma, we find him raising an army to espouse her cause, and fighting her battles, the Bothwell of his time. He failed, and he and his wife were put to death together on the 14th of November A.D. 1239.
A tragic tale indeed! Best finished by another excerpt from the historian.
”The reign of Sultana Razia Begum lasted three years, six months, and six days. Those who reflect on the fate of this unfortunate princess will readily discover from whence arose the foul blast that blighted all her prospects.--What connection exists between the high office of Amir-ul Omra and an Abyssinian slave? Or how are we to reconcile the inconsistency of the queen of so vast a territory fixing her affections on so unworthy an object?”
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